How to Raise Equity for a Single-Tenant Warehouse in 2026

This article is general information, not legal, tax, securities or investment advice. Laws, rates and programs change, and the details here may no longer be current. Confirm anything you plan to act on with your own counsel and accountant.

Raise equity for a single-tenant warehouse by underwriting the lease before the building, holding the building in its own SPV, and finishing the investor structure before a lender sees the deal. One tenant pays all the rent. That makes the lease the whole credit. Clear height, loading and power matter for a narrower reason: they tell a lender who else could use the building.

Neither client file below is an industrial or warehouse building. Dr. Roberta Hoskie and Dave Klivans both worked with Raises.com®, she on a fund for modular homes in Pennsylvania and he on debt and equity for his real estate acquisitions. The structure they used carries over. What is new is the single tenant.

1. Read the lease as the credit

A single-tenant warehouse has one source of rent, so a lender underwrites the tenant's ability to pay before it looks at the building's concrete and steel. Start with who signed the lease. A parent company and a one-location LLC carry different risk at the same rent. Ask whether the parent stands behind the lease in writing.

Then ask for the tenant's financial statements. A public company files them. A private tenant may refuse, and some leases require the tenant to deliver statements every year, which is the clause a lender looks for first when the tenant has no public filings. If the tenant will not share and the lease does not require it, the lender prices that in. So will your investors.

2. Measure the term left against the loan

Lenders check the firm term left on the lease against the loan. A renewal option is the tenant's choice, never its obligation, so a lender sizes the loan on the years the tenant has already committed to and treats the options as upside. A lease that ends before the loan matures is the problem case. Expect a reserve, or a cash sweep that begins before the expiry date.

The same test applies to your investors. If the plan holds the building past the lease end, the PPM has to say what happens when the tenant leaves at expiry and who pays the carrying costs. In a triple-net lease the tenant pays the taxes, insurance and upkeep. An empty building sends all three back to you. Write that into the documents before an investor asks.

3. Answer the next-tenant question with the building

Clear height, loading and power belong in your deal for one reason: they are how a lender judges what the building is worth to the next tenant. Clear height is the usable height under the lowest beam or joist. Loading means the dock-high doors, the grade-level doors and room for trucks to turn. Power is the electrical service the building can carry.

A building only one kind of tenant can use is a thinner credit than its rent suggests. A cold storage box or a plant wired for heavy manufacturing can sit empty a long time, because few tenants need exactly that. Ask the appraiser and the broker who else would lease it. Put their answer in the data room.

Two more items come with an industrial building. A lender will require a Phase I environmental site assessment before closing, because past industrial use can leave contamination the new owner inherits. Lenders also ask the tenant for an estoppel certificate confirming the rent and term. Most want an SNDA too. That is a subordination, non-disturbance and attornment agreement, and it keeps the lease in force if the lender ever forecloses.

4. Put one building in one SPV

A single-asset SPV owns the warehouse and nothing else, so the loan, the lease and the investors all sit inside one company. Dr. Hoskie's fund runs a separate special purpose vehicle for each project, starting with Altoona, under one compliant Rule 506(b) structure with a certified cap table. One project's risk stays inside its own SPV. The same design suits a warehouse. If this tenant leaves, investors in your next building are not exposed to it.

Pick the exemption before you talk to anyone about the deal. Rule 506(b) allows unlimited accredited investors and up to 35 non-accredited investors, with no general solicitation, while Rule 506(c) lets you market the offering openly to accredited investors whose status you verify. File Form D within 15 days of the first sale. Dr. Hoskie's package was standardized on 506(b) across every document, and its Form D was filed with the SEC.

5. Write the empty building into the documents

The private placement memorandum is where the single-tenant risk gets disclosed in plain words. Name the tenant, the date its lease ends and the renewal options it holds, then say what the building costs to carry while empty. The operating agreement decides who signs a renewal or a new lease, and whether members can be asked for more cash to fund re-leasing. Investors read that clause closely.

Fund that cost at closing. A leasing reserve, sized from the broker's estimate of downtime and re-leasing cost, belongs in the sources and uses beside the price, the loan and the equity. If the numbers only work without it, the price is too high.

Anything you promise investors out loud belongs on paper. Dr. Hoskie had offered her community a tiered return schedule in conversation, which was a preferred return with a hurdle whether or not anyone called it that. A written ROI amendment then covered the extra 2% owed to one investor tier, so the promise became a document. A warehouse pitch that calls the tenant as safe as a bond has the same problem. Put the real risk in the PPM instead.

6. Structure the raise before the lender sees it

A lender sizes the loan off the one lease and then asks where the rest of the money comes from. Equity already organized in an SPV, with the exemption picked and the documents drafted, is something a credit officer can underwrite. A spreadsheet of interested friends is not. Take the lender's terms to size the equity, then raise into that number.

Dave Klivans handed his debt and equity sourcing to Raises.com® so he could stay on sourcing deals. The team put his holdings into a single data room and built one financial model across his personal and business entities to show the debt service coverage his lenders required. His lenders had one place to look. Hold a warehouse raise to the same standard.

Single-tenant vs multi-tenant industrial: what the lender reads first

Frequently asked questions

Can I use an SBA loan to buy a warehouse I lease to someone else?

No, not for a building you hold to collect rent. SBA rules at 13 CFR 120.110 exclude passive businesses owned by landlords who do not occupy the property. A company that occupies the building for its own operations is a different case, and an investor-owned warehouse is financed with conventional commercial debt.

Does a renewal option count toward the lease term?

Lenders give it little or no weight when they size the loan. The option belongs to the tenant, so the lender counts the years the tenant has committed to and treats any renewal as a possibility. Your PPM should show investors the same view.

What is clear height on an industrial building?

Clear height is the distance from the floor to the lowest overhead obstruction, usually the roof joists or beams. It decides how high a tenant can stack racking. A lender reads it as one answer to who else could lease the building.

What will a lender ask about the tenant?

Who signed the lease, what stands behind that signature, and how many firm years are left. Expect requests for the tenant's financial statements, an estoppel certificate and an SNDA before closing. Silence from a private tenant usually means a smaller loan.

Raises.com® builds the structure behind the warehouse: the PPM, the subscription and operating agreements, CFA financial proformas and the data room. The raise is then legally and financially sound before anyone reads it. See how acquisition capital gets structured at https://raises.com/buy-a-business, or book a strategy call at https://raises.com/call.

General information, not legal, tax, securities or investment advice. Laws, rates and programs change, and the details here may no longer be current. Confirm anything you plan to act on with your own counsel and accountant.